Leisure Suit Larry is a series of adventure games written by Al Lowe and published by Sierra from 1987 to 2009. The main character, whose full name is Larry Laffer, is a balding, dorky, double entendre-speaking, leisure suit-wearing (but still somewhat lovable) "loser" in his 40s. The games follow him as he spends much of his life trying (usually unsuccessfully) to seduce attractive women.[more inside]posted by Trurl at 6:43 PM PST - 68 comments

"The earliest record we have of the lowering of a flag to signify a death was an occasion in 1612, when the Master of the 'Hearts Ease', William Hall, was murdered by Eskimos while taking part in an expedition in search of the North West Passage. On rejoining her consort, the vessel's flag was flown trailing over the stern as a mark of mourning. On her return to London, the 'Hearts Ease' again flew her flag over the stern and it was recognised as an appropriate gesture of mourning."[more inside]posted by Deflagro at 6:33 PM PST - 11 comments

Take 210,000 colour transparencies – plus or minus a thousand or two. Examine them one by one by one, carefully and closely. Study – and think about – the framing, lighting and colour balance. Check for any blurring or closed eyes. Think about how they’ll look blown up to billboard size. Take your time. You’ll need to. Now make an initial pick – 100 shots, say. Then cut your choices down to 30 – ‘the brown bag’ in movie jargon, the selection which will go to the studio executives. Then trim that down to six transparencies. And finally, to just one image – the iconic one.

That is the process by which Stanley Kubrick’s 1975 film The Shining came to be known by that one, terrifying moment of Jack Nicholson’s wild, unshaven, grinning face – eyes sharp left – emerging through an axe-smashed door. And it’s how Murray Close learned to take a photograph.

This B.A.S.E. jump went very, very wrong. For reasons unknown, after a good exit from a 450 meter cliff this jumper's wingsuit did not inflate on one side, causing him to go completely unstable. Out of desperation he deployed his canopy which, as you might expect, opened with massive line twists. Yet somehow he managed to walk away unscratched! Watching this = drinking 3 cups of coffee! SLTYposted by Dean358 at 2:59 PM PST - 53 comments

When a prosecutor argues a bullshit case to a jury, he typically does so for one of two reasons: Either he is not terribly bright or he is cravenly amoral. [West Memphis Three Prosecutor] Fogleman would not speak to me on the record, which means I cannot report what he said. But my impressions are fair game. John Fogleman is pleasant, charming, and oddly forthcoming. He is also perfectly bright.

Over the past several years, Mozilla's collection of developer documentation for its own web browsers has turned into a wiki-editable reference of web standards for developers working with all browsers, hosting a comprehensive, no-nonsense reference of HTML, HTML5, CSS, JavaScript, the DOM, and more. If you find yourself turning to this reference frequently, dochub provides instant access to Mozilla's documentation for any HTML, CSS, JavaScript, or DOM-related topic. If you're worried that a fancy new standard might not work in an older browser, canIuse will tell you exactly how many browsers will support that new standard. Still want to use that shiny new standard? Modernizr and yepnope will let you detect missing features, and load tiny bits of code to make old browsers support the latest HTML5 hotness.
[via the carefully-curated selections of JavaScript and HTML5 Weekly, run by MetaFilter's ownwackybrit] posted by schmod at 12:11 PM PST - 25 comments

On August 19, 1969, the (prime time ABC version of the) Dick Cavett show featured several popular musicians. pt 1 - pt 2 - pt 3 - pt 4 - pt 5 The Jefferson Airplane, David Crosby and Stephen Stills had rushed back from a show they did at a festival. Jimi Hendrix couldn't get back in time, but appeared later. The third guest, Joni Mitchell, skipped Woodstock to make sure she was on time for this broadcast, but a month later she wrote a cool song based on what she saw on TV and heard from friends. [more inside]posted by msalt at 10:48 AM PST - 17 comments

"What a strange position I find myself in," [Yamamoto] wrote a friend, "having been assigned the mission diametrically opposed to my own personal opinion, with no choice but to push full speed in pursuance of that mission. Alas, is that fate?"

Previous experiments have hinted at the connection... Physicists have found the strongest evidence yet of quantum effects fueling photosynthesis.
Multiple experiments in recent years have suggested as much, but it’s been hard to be sure. Quantum effects were clearly present in the light-harvesting antenna proteins of plant cells, but their precise role in processing incoming photons remained unclear.
In an experiment published Dec. 6 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a connection between coherence — far-flung molecules interacting as one, separated by space but not time — and energy flow is established.
“There was a smoking gun before,” said study co-author Greg Engel of the University of Chicago. “Here we can watch the relationship between coherence and energy transfer. This is the first paper showing that coherence affects the probability of transport. It really does change the chemical dynamics.” posted by aleph at 12:01 AM PST - 64 comments

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